New Naxos Recording of Wuorinen's Chamber Music

Naxos has done a fine job producing and making available at budget prices state-of-the-art recordings of modern American composers in an extended series of individual volumes. The music of Charles Wuorinen is a good example. By my count the CD up for discussion today is at least the fifth one released, and it's a good one.

Chamber Music (Naxos 8.559694) covers three works from the past decade, all getting their world-premier recording, and one classic work from 1971, the First String Quartet. If the new works represented are any indication of an overall trend, Charles Wuorinen seems to be returning to and rethinking his stance on the modified high-modernism that made his earlier reputation and in which he showed such brilliance. By around 1971 he had received a Pulitzer Prize for his electronic work Times Ecomium, was an influential member of the music faculty at Columbia University, and was well-represented in recordings of his music. His String Quartet was made available in a Turnabout recording released at the time, and it remains an excellent example of the logic and lyricism he brought to the sound and operating procedures of the serial/post-serial music then current. The work wears well, as the fine version of the piece on the Naxos release attests.

As time went on Wuorinen modified his compositional stance somewhat to incorporate more conventionally tonal elements and linear form that recalled the styles of the classical past. His music remained seminal but perhaps the predominance he enjoyed in the early '70s became a lesser factor as other composers and other stylistic trends came to the fore. But he has continued to create music that I believe will hold up well in the years to come.

And so we move on to today and the three later works included in the present volume. They are very well-performed by pianist Peter Serkin, celloist Fred Sherry, violist Lois Martin and the Brentano String Quartet. The centerpiece surely is the Second Piano Quintet (2008), a four movement work of great energy and expressiveness, with an unusual return of the third movement at the end of the work.

I will not attempt to describe the working means by which Wuorinen creates his music, past or present. I leave you to the excellent liner notes accompanying the disk. For the lay listener, what matters ultimately is the modernist beauty that combines stark, somewhat severe passages with passages of great momentum and cumulative kinetic flow.

Wuorinen continues to be one of the most important compositional voices active today. He and Elliot Carter form the Yin and Yang of contemporary American modernism in many ways. This recording combines exceptional compositions with superior performances. Anyone interested in modern music should hear it. Very much recommended.

Three Modern Works by Harold Meltzer

Harold Meltzer, born in Brooklyn New York in 1966, has a lyrical logic to his music. He notes that he has been influenced by Stravinsky's Agon, and when you listen to his music you understand how. There are melodic cells that occur and recur in his pieces and they can be contrasting or similar, depending. And like middle-late Stravinsky those cells can vary stylistically. Meltzer's cells are lyrically memorable and the music flows with an ordered logic that pleases the aural mind's eye.

This is what I have gleaned from listening to a new Naxos (8.559660) release of four chamber works he composed in the past decade: "Brion," "Two Songs from Silas Marner," "Sindbad," and "Exiles."

"Brion" is a chamber gem, with vivid writing for guitar, mandolin, winds and strings. It's 18 minutes of musical bliss, well worth the price of admission. In fact it is all worthwhile.

"Sindbad," for violin, cello, piano, and John Shirley-Quirk as narrator, is an exception however, for reasons that have nothing to do with the music per se. It runs almost 30 minutes and the actual instrumental music parts are quite interesting. Now I suppose I should say straight off that recitation rather leaves me cold. If it's part of an opera and moves the plot along I can understand; otherwise I find very few things that can be said are worth saying rather than singing. Shakespeare, fine. The Gettysburg Address, again fine. "Sindbad" is a rather amusing story, but it does not hold its own as worth declaiming in its own right. Now that's not to take away from the text itself, or the music that goes along with it. I'll admit it is a personal prejudice I have. I didn't like it.

But the songs and the chamber pieces are very engaging, well crafted, inspired. And the performances sound quite good. Hearing this CD, I want to hear more from Harold Meltzer. He has something going.

Daron Hagen's Complete Piano Trios

American composer Daron Hagen (b. 1961) may not be universally recognized for his chamber music. The recent release of his Complete Piano Trios (Naxos 8.559657) may do much to rectify that.

There are four trios written between 1984-2007. Each has its own character. I must say I do quite like the third, based on the folk melody "The Wayfaring Stranger."

His music is lyrical, "neo" more than avant garde, idiomatic and well thought out.

It's the sort of music one knows will take quite a few listens to absorb fully and before such work-pleasure is complete, some ultimate or semi-ultimate judgement will not be on the personal program. At least that's how it is with me.

This is music that is "serious" in the same way that Aaron Copland's chamber music was. It is not given to pleasantries. There is a depth to these pieces I've yet to fully plummet. I will say that the performances by the Finisterra Trio seem marvelous to me. Detailed and passionate interpretations prevail.

I do recommend this recording. I reserve final judgement on the music itself however, until I've lived with it for a longer time. One thing is clear. Daron Hagen's Piano Trios are formidable works.

Schulhoff's Quartets, Beautifully Performed

If you are not familiar with the music of Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), you aren't alone. There are reasons for that. A Czech would-be national whose left-leaning politics ended him up in a Nazi concentration camp, where he died in 1942, he was one of those whose career and very life were essentially deconstructed by the tragic and evil circumstances of those horrible times.

But lucky for us all his music survives and seems to be undergoing a resurgence. A terrific place to start is with the release at hand, an excellent Naxos recording of his String Quartets. This is music with an Eastern European, Slavic, Semitic (?) sound to it. It's very lovely, very rhythmic in parts, very melodically interesting and very well put-together. Think of the quartets of Janacek and Bartok (and Dvorak before them), then forget all of that because Schulhoff doesn't channel their music in any direct way. He is simply working out of a musical mind-set that he in part shares with these three great composers. (Like Kafka and Musil, for a literary parallel). And in my humble opinion, Schulhoff's Quartets hold their own in such illustrious company.

But I might have missed the impact of this music if it wasn't for the exceptional performances of the Aviv Quartet. They are just fabulous. They have the Slavic-Semitic brio in full abundance, which is exactly what these quartets need. The Aviv Quartet play with great energy, passion, fire and rhythmic dash. Just beautiful!

To combine all of this and the peanuts Naxos asks you to pay to get a copy, well, I certainly would not hesitate to respectfully compel you to go and grab this one. In fact, here we are in May, but so far without hesitation this release is MY SLEEPER OF THE YEAR. Set your farmer's alarm clock for early and go out and get a copy before they all disappear! Seriously though, I am enchanted with this release. And I am quite surprised, because I had no idea that Schulhoff's music was this good.

Jessica Pavone's Chamber Music Based on Leonard Cohen

The post-before serious music world is not unlike the contemporary visual arts situation. It is OK to evoke any previous style, combine it with other contrasting styles, bring in "popular' elements, in short, do whatever seems to work for the artist.

Jessica Pavone's Songs of Synastry and Solitude (Tzadik) fits comfortably in with that. It's a suite of pieces for string quartet, with contrabass replacing the usual second violin part. The music is based on songs from Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love and Hate. However it is not necessary to search slavishly for original motifs and whatnot from Mr. Cohen's work to appreciate the music. It stands on its own.

This is tonal music that has a lyrical, reflective, well balanced kind of sobriety to it. That doesn't mean it's overly somber, though it has that quality. It is music that transcends modernity without reverting to some overt form of neo-romanticism or neo-classicism. It's just neo. And quite an intriguing listen.